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H O M E
-------W R I T I N G ------- S H O R T
S T O R Y |
18th
March 2002
S.V.Narayananathan felt indifferent this Monday
morning. He had woken up as usual at
Just then, Narayanan
heard the sound his ears had been to hearing between 6:15 and 6:25 every
morning. His personal copy of The Hindu had been flung into his living room
(the only room) by Ram Lal, the hawker whose age even
Narayanan could not guess. Although Narayanan was waiting for the newspaper so
eagerly (he himself did not know why), he would not get up from his chair to
pick it up. Pankajam (dutiful that she was) pounced
on the newspaper, removed the rubber-band, straightened out the newspaper, and
gave it to her husband. Before Narayanan could put on his reading glasses and
pull out the newspaper into 1 sheet from its folded position and say “So what’s
the news today?”, Pankajam had disappeared into the
kitchen, prepared Narayanan’s second dose of coffee and was stretching the tumbler+davara
combo towards Narayanan. Narayanan could not fathom why he was waiting for the
newspaper so eagerly. There was no news that could possibly interest him- it
was the same news everyday. Sometimes he wondered how
easy it would be to print these newspapers. Anyway, he was in an indifferent
mood. He had enjoyed his weekend by doing nothing at all, but now it was time
to go to the office for the next 5 days. No, not that he did not like going to
office – he was no kid not wanting to go to school- he was all of 43 years old
and a sincere government servant in the Ministry of External Affairs. His
office was in the CGO complex in Lodhi Road in Delhi,
and getting to his office on weekday mornings was something he dreaded. You
see, Narayanan was this frail looking tamilian who
would let a fly hurt him, and he had to get pushed and shoveled by all and
sundry in his cross-country adventurous journey from Regar Pura (Narayanan insisted on calling it Regar, not Regad as the Indi(Hindi) people would say- it was spelt Regar in English) to Lodhi Road.
But then, almost as if on cue with E.V.Lucas’ town week,
he would not mind this tough journey as the week progressed. Monday was the
worst.
It was 7 – the Indi news on Vividh Bharti had
started, preceded by the usual 5 beeps of Morse Code and the “Yeh Akashvani hai…ab aap Sulekha
Chitradhir se samachar suniye”. That moment was not for listening for news, but
for Narayanan to start getting ready to go office. He got up energetically,
placed the newspaper carefully on the stool and started getting out of the
clothes he was wearing and getting into the clothes Pankajam
had carefully laid out for him. Oh No…what was this…”Pangajan,
look at this shirt, the collar button is broken. Why don’t you wash these
clothes more delicately? Fix this, fast”. (You need to know that tamilians usually substitute K with G, M with N in a lot of
their pronunciations. Just as they substitute a whole lot of other consonants
(and vowels). If you didn’t know, you will get to know.) Pankajam
rushed in (she was always rushing somewhere, all the time), looked
apologetically at Narayanan who had by then flung his shirt on the armchair. Pankajam did not stop to consider that Narayanan never
buttoned his collar. So why was the collar button so important? Anyway, it was
her fault that the button was broken, and she started going about the process
of rectifying her grave mistake. She was done in a minute, and disappeared into
the kitchen (again). Narayanan got on with dressing and completed it – he was a
simple man when it came to dressing. He just wore a steel-gray or brown or blue
trouser (only one of the three at a given time), a plain or stripe shirt(with
white as the base) and a pen sticking out of his shirt pocket. The pen was a
part of his dress- nay, a part of his body, much like other accessories like
his glasses, the office bag, the umbrella e.t.c. He wanted to wear a Safari
suit for such a long time, but just could not do it because his boss Mr. Arora
(not Aroda!) wore it to office. How could he dare to
wear the same elitist dress as his boss? It was 7:20 and time for Narayanan to
leave for office. He called out in his throaty voice “Pankajan,
I am starting for office”. Pankajam came running out
(from the kitchen, where else?) and thrust the empty vegetable bag into
Narayanan’s hand.
“Please buy half a kilo
of Parval from the grocer who is third from left on
the road outside the CGO complex when you come back from office”
“Why? You should be
taking care of all these things. I do not have all the time in the world to be
buying vegetables. I am going to the office- an office that does work for the
Government of India. What do you think?” It was almost natural for Narayanan to
admonish Pankajam for anything.
“But naa,
Parval is 25paise to the kilo cheaper outside your
office. We have to be very careful spending money these days. Why, Kichu is growing up and we need to save for his expenses
too.”
Narayanan took the bag
in his hand. He was proud of his wife’s conservative spending habits, and his
way of acknowledging this would be to NOT scold her. Silence was golden for Pankajam.
Narayanan began his 20
minute walk to Ajmal Khan Road to catch the phatphat. The phatphat would take
him to Shivaji Stadium in Connaught Circus (which
became Connaught place, and subsequently Indira Chowk+Rajiv Chowk – but people
call it CP only), from where he would get into the damn crowded 521 bus.
Narayanan quickened his pace when he thought of the impending phatphat trip. He wanted to get the seat right behind the
driver, so that his ass would not have to indulge in a battle with somebody
else’s for territorial advantage. For the phatphatly
challenged of you, the phatphat is a primitive pool
vehicle that used to run in Delhi. It is a big carriage with an even bigger
driver, has space for 8 people to sit (but the driver always manages to seat 9
somehow), travels from point A to B, and begins the
journey only when all 8 (9) people have boarded the vehicle – which could take
as long as eternity. The two seats right behind the driver on either side are
single seats, and only 1 person could sit on these (although the driver somehow
always managed to con one of the two people on these seats to share it with the
9th person onboard). Narayanan walked quickly as he saw the
challenge in front of him – to grab one of the two seats. His heart sank as he
approached the phatphat stand….For some inexplicable
reason, he could see not a single available seat in one phatphat,
and all the others phatphats were empty. Which meant
that he would have to be the 9th person on the phatphat
ready to take off, or wander around till this phatphat
left with some other 9th person, and get onto the next phatphat and wait for 8 more people to come. Shoot- what a
teaser of a decision to make first thing in the morning. Narayanan did not like
making decisions- he did not like being responsible for decisions. But he liked
to have opinions, and give them -
solicited or unsolicited. Anyway, this was crunch time. If he took this phatphat, he could get the 8:35 521 at Shivaji
stadium and be in his office at 9:30. Else he would be delayed and would have
to ask that AroRa bugger for an OD (Oh, so you ask
‘What the heck is this?’ OD is on-duty, the one way to change your late sojourn
to office into a legitimate activity without having the 482 vacation days a
year cap reduced by half-a-day. Occasionally, getting an OD results in buying louki for the boss’ missus.) Considering the options he
had, Narayanan decided to plunge into the battle of the backsides- fighting for
asspace is better than buying louki
for a foul mouthed, big, jewellery laden AroRess! And it was going to be wonly
tontyfie (only twenty five) minutes of endurance.
Narayanan could do better than that.
And so, the journey
began. The burly phatpaht driver invited Narayanan
like a God-send “aaiye saab…baithiye…”. Narayanan wanted to ask “Just where do you see
space to sit, you fool? If only your brain grew as much as your body…”, but all
he could manage in his sheepish voice was “Kahaan?”
All 8 people sitting
inside the phatphat were staring out on the road as
though a Miss Karol Bagh pageant was happening on the
road. The first person to make eye-contact with the driver or Naraynan would have to yield buttspace.
Unfortunately the driver knew this too. He looked at the most frail looking
man, sharing a double seat with a big fat marwadi clutching
a suitcase. The driver had decided that two frail and thin men as Narayanan and
the other guy could surely share with the marwadi. He
pointed to the double seat and told Narayanan “Arey saab, yahaan peeche
baithiye na..”
The expected response
from the fat marwadi was to twitch slightly in his
position – his effort to make space for Narayanan. This activity resulted in
precisely
Narayanan was glad he
could mentally scold his wife – the 25 minute ride to Shivaji
Stadium passed off in a flash. The ordeal of the phatphat
was not over yet. How were the 9 people inside the damn vehicle going to get
off it without seriously mauling each other (and themselves). One asshole even
tried to reach into his pocket to get money and pay for his ride. He got Narayanan’s
belly with his elbow in this effort. Narayanan had to say “toda
tho rukh jaawo na baai-saab…utharke de dena…” And when
another nut sitting across Narayanan tried to get out, he punched the
spectacles off Narayanan, so that the glasses were perched precariously on the
tip of Narayanan’s nose. Narayanan somehow located his hand, and made it travel
to his nose and pushed the glasses back. He thought “Mawaney…if
only this had been Madras, I would have shown you…” As it turned out, this
wasn’t Madras, and after somehow 8 passengers got out of the phatphat, Narayanan got down too and headed for the 521.
One of God’s small
mercies. 521 was crowded only to the extent that you could see thin air between
the faces of people standing inside the bus. Narayanan sighed, and boarded the
bus. He had perfected the art of traveling in 521. All he had to do was to get
to one of the seats and hold on to the seat rest for support. He would not lose
his balance or fall down during the motion of the bus – nobody would, nobody
could – it would be so packed. The real bonus in the journey would be if
somebody had opened the window in the bus around the place where Narayanan
stood. No, it is not that people would prefer to keep the window closed – just
that the windows would generally be jammed and even Dara
Singh could not force them open. With his lean and acrobatic body, Narayanan
managed to make it to a spot beside a seat in the bus, thrust his office bag
(with the empty vegetable bag inside it) to a passenger sitting with “Sir, Plis…”, kept one eye on the passenger holding his bag and
the other on his bag itself. The driver got into the bus, punched a few
buttons, joined the ends of a couple of loose wires, the speakers on the rear
of the bus screamed out “dekha hai
pehli baar, saajan ki aankhon
mein pyar” and the bus
started.
Narayanan got off the
bus at 9:20 and was in his seat at 9:30. He had been using the sleeves of his
white to shirt to clear his perspiring face. He generally liked to wear a white
shirt on Mondays to office. It was almost as if he wanted to dress his best on
Mondays and did not mind if the quality of his dress came down during the
course of the week. He sat down on his office char, tired and exhausted from
the 2-hour struggle to reach office. Now, he could relax for a few hours…!!!
(cont…)